[ List Latest Comments Only For Pages | Games | Rated Pages | Rated Games | Subjects of Discussion ]
Rated Comments for a Single Item
The simplest proof that two-sided variants evolved from four-handed Chaturanga is to examine Pachisi, and evolution of pachisi board into the 8 x 8 board, and how its pieces (4 teams) became Chaturanga pawns. In answer to the question about strength of my Chaturanga.com software, answer is that is almost unbeatable at the higher/ slower levels. I have recently refined some of the endgame algorithms. Over 10 million variants are playable within the software! Book on Chaturanga out soon .... maybe 2013, and busy on Zenet project currently http://kemetic.org
that program is great that at http://www.chaturanga.com/ .. default variant is 'double mate' where red/yellow play against black/green, winning by checkmating both enemy kings, or reducing them to lone king. red can say mate black, but that doesn't mean it is permanent, just that black does not move every time it is blacks move .. green can release black by attacking etc, or it may be in red/yellow's interest to actually release black, it is pretty amazing!! another great variant is 'rajah capture, which can be played with teams or everyone against everyone. kings can be taken in this variant, there is no mates. all these games are brilliant, always lots of action.
I strongly disagree with the anonymous reader who rated this page: 'poor'. Curiously, he is making History going the wrong way, against the time direction. Murray wrote in 1913 and his book is an impressive work, even today. If few points are now outdated, he can not be outdated neither by Forbes writing in 1860 nor Cox writing in 1801. The Cox-Forbes theory has never been confirmed and nodody gives credit to it in 2005 ! It is against all evidence, even though several mis-informed authors do continue to copy each other and repeat the mistake saying this game was the ancestor of Chess. But you can believe what you want, maybe Martians or Venusians did invent 4Handed Chaturanga and brought it to India, maybe Cullen was a Venusian too as I do not know any Cullen. I know a Stewart Culin, who was a great ethnologist in the begining of the XX c., who wrote a lot about games, but Chess was not his speciality at all. This page is Good. Jean-Louis Cazaux http://history.chess.free.fr/chaturanga.htm
Are there a ZRF on this game? Does anybody already tried out how strong plays software sold on http://www.chaturanga.com ? From screenshot is looks quite professionally made.
Selective, inaccurate, and limited to Murray, ignoring the much more authorative authors such as Cullen, Forbes & Cox.
Very nice, useful summary, although I'm not sure where I stand on the issue of which version existed first. There's bound to be some disagreement, of course, and I hardly think that because someone disagrees with you, their view on the subject is 'appalling.'
My father purchased a game of Chaturanga from an estate sale and we have been looking for interpretation of the game rules (written in Spanish) and now you have solved our problem! Thank you!
I have to agree here. 2P was a variant of 4P, not the other way around. Ref: R. C. Bell, 'Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations.' With regard to the actual content of the page, though, the page is fine.
Murray's notion that 2-sided Chatrang predates the 4-sided Chaturanga is patently wrong. Where is any evidence? What about previous chess historian Prof Duncan Forbes proof for the priority of the 4-sided game? No mention of Stuart Cullen either. An appalling summary of Chaturanga that should be removed from the web! www.chaturanga.com
11 comments displayed
Permalink to the exact comments currently displayed.

Thanks for the response, that is kind of what I thought but wasn't sure.
Greg